expensive restaurants cost us at least a thousand dollars, without
estimating the total of those invariable purchases that are paid for out
of the letter of credit and not charged to my wife's regular allowance.
Even in Paris she will, without a thought, spend fifty dollars at
Reboux' for a simple spring hat--and this is not regarded as expensive.
Her dresses cost as much as if purchased on Fifth Avenue and I am
obliged to pay a sixty per cent duty on them besides.

The restaurants of Paris--the chic ones--charge as much as those in New
York; in fact, chic Paris exists very largely for the exploitation of
the wives of rich Americans. The smart French woman buys no such dresses
and pays no such prices. She knows a clever little modiste down some
alley leading off the Rue St. Honoré who will saunter into Worth's,
sweep the group of models with her eye, and go back to her own shop and
turn out the latest fashions at a quarter of the money.

A French woman in society will have the same dress made for her by her
own dressmaker for seventy dollars for which an American will cheerfully
pay three hundred and fifty. And the reason is, that she has been
taught from girlhood the relative values of things. She knows that mere
clothes can never really take the place of charm and breeding; that
expensive entertainments, no matter how costly and choice the viands,
can never give equal pleasure with a cup of tea served with vivacity and
wit; and that the best things of Paris are, in fact, free to all
alike--the sunshine of the boulevards, the ever-changing spectacle of
the crowds, the glamour of the evening glow beyond the Hôtel des
Invalides, and the lure of the lamp-strewn twilight of the Champs
Elysées.

So she gets a new dress or two and, after the three months of her season